Time Machine problems? Try The Time Machine Mechanic. It’ll tell you what’s wrong.

It has essentially two controls: you set the period, in hours, which you want it to analyse. This now works properly, so that you can type the number in or use the stepper controller to adjust it. Once you have done that, click on the Check Time Machine button, and it will shortly come back with a very detailed analysis of all Time Machine backups made over that period, and set the ‘traffic light’ to green, amber, or red accordingly.

Information provided includes:

• The location of the last backup it made, in both Unix disk terms and its path,
• The amount of free space on that volume at the start of the last backup,
• How many backups it started, and how many completed successfully, over the period,
• The time elapsed since the last backup completed,
• Figures on the number of files backed up in total, and the range for each backup,
• A list of the total size of data backed up on each occasion,
• A list of the time periods taken to complete each backup,
• A list of the time intervals between each backup starting,
• The total number of new backups made, and of old backups deleted,
• The number of error messages over the period.